WESTBROOK – A Portland church has made good on its promise to donate a former Unitarian Universalist church building in Westbrook to the community, with an eye toward cultural development.
The Allen Avenue Unitarian Universalist Church in Portland has sold the former church building at 719 Main St. to Westbrook Housing for $1, according to John Gallagher, executive director of the housing authority.
The Portland church bought the building last year, after a dwindling local congregation forced it to close. Trudy McNulty, speaking for the church, said then that the goal all along was not to make money, but to see that the building was used for the public good, not just torn down to make way for condominiums.
“That’s our fear, that someone would do that and chop it up,” she said.
This week, Gallagher said, Westbrook Housing officials are meeting on Thursday with local artists and performers to discuss possible uses for the building.
“We want to see what the best community uses for it (are),” he said.
Mike Freysinger, a Westbrook Housing property manager who is helping organize efforts to develop the building, acknowledged this week that creating a cultural center may not seem to fit with the mission of a housing authority – until one considers that such a center would be in the downtown area, within walking distance of many of the organization’s other properties. The idea, he said, is to use the center to draw residents to those properties.
“Housing, business, social services, they’re all interconnected,” he said.
Keith Luke, the city’s director of community and economic development, said this week that any new initiative like a cultural center that attracts people to the downtown area is welcome.
“Anything that brings activity to any portion of Main Street, that’s not a bad thing,” he said.
The cultural center project complements a project Westbook Housing completed on Main Street. Earlier this year, it began marketing the three-unit building as artists’ condos. Each one consists of a dwelling above a small commercial space where artisans can sell their creations.
Freysinger said the condos have not sold yet, but there has been interest from a number of artists in the area, and another goal of the new center is that it and the condos will spur interest in each other.
Luke said it is not unusual for old church buildings to be converted into cultural centers, citing the Chocolate Church Arts Center in Bath as an example. Built in the 19th century in the Gothic Revival style, the building, after falling into disuse, has been the center’s home for the past 30 years. Today, it offers live performances and art exhibits, and Luke said there’s certainly a possibility of seeing a similar development at 719 Main St.
“I think it’s worth discussing,” Luke said.
Freysinger said the Chocolate Church is a good example of the potential that exists at the church building, and that he and other authority members have already gotten positive feedback from local artists and performers.
“A lot of artists said this was a place they’d really, really enjoy playing (at),” he said.
With the Westbrook Performing Arts Center nearby at the middle school, Luke said, it might be tough to make the church building work as a performance center, But, Freysinger said, local performers were actually more interested in appearing at a smaller venue like the church, which could potentially seat about 200 people.
“A lot of folks said that was a huge advantage,” he said.
Mike Levine, producing director at Acorn Productions, a local theater group, said he had not seen the property or discussed it with the authority, but said there is “a real need” for a venue that size.
“As a potential user of the space, I’d love to see them get it up and running,” he said of the church building.
But that could be easier said than done, depending on the building’s condition, Levine said. Renovations at similar venues in the past, he said, have been known to cost thousands of dollars. On top of that, the authority would need someone to manage it as a performance venue, Levine said, and that takes a manager who knows how to run such a center.
“They’re very unique creatures with very unique needs,” he said of performance venues.
Freysinger said Westbrook Housing has gone into this project with its eyes open. Right now, he said, he is doing research on finding grants to do any needed renovations, and part of the purpose of Thursday’s meeting is to get more suggestions from local artists and performers so the authority will better know how to manage the property.
“It was definitely not something we wanted to jump into without knowing exactly what we were doing,” he said.
Mike Sanphy, president of the Westbrook Historical Society, said construction of the church started in 1887, and it was completed in 1888.
Before that, he said, the congregation met in another church building built in 1840 at 917 Main St. In modern times, that building once housed a Montgomery Ward store. Sanphy said it was recently torn down to make way for a new Westbrook Housing project.
The former Unitarian Universalist Church on Main Street in
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